Norra Härene kyrka

Excavations during restoration work in 1967 uncovered a gravestone beneath the church floor belonging to a so-called Eskilstuna cist, a burial type typical of the eleventh century, which is the basis for dating the earliest structure on this site to that period. The stone church that visitors see traces of today was built in the twelfth century, replacing an earlier stave church, and twelfth-century walls survive in the south wall of the nave, with fourteenth-century masonry also found beneath the floor.

The building took its distinctive current form gradually: a late medieval extension lengthened the church to the east, further eastward extension with a three-sided choir came in the 1730s, and the church was widened to the north between 1757 and 1775. This history of piecemeal enlargement has given Norra Härene an unusual profile, with a plain, flat west gable contrasting with the three-sided eastern end and its projecting sacristy, the latter rebuilt in brick in 1967.

Details set into the west façade come from the richly decorated Soop family burial chapel, built on the church's north side in 1645 but demolished barely 120 years later during the 1767 enlargement. A stone cannonball is also set into the wall above the entrance; according to one older local historian this recalls Danish raids on the district in the early seventeenth century, though the story cannot be independently confirmed. For a time in the eighteenth century the church was known as Sophia Magdalena, after the consort of Gustav III, and the gilded sun ornament crowning the roof bears her initials. A sundial is set into the south wall.

Among the furnishings are two carved oak Madonna figures, one a standing figure from a thirteenth-century Calvary group, the other from the fifteenth century, shown standing on a crescent moon. The medieval font, thought to be contemporary with the twelfth-century church, has a bowl decorated with reliefs including the baptism of Christ and Michael and the dragon. The pulpit combines elements from different periods, with parts dating from the seventeenth century, a sounding board from the eighteenth, and a base and stairs added in 1967. The altarpiece and its painting, by Johan Aureller, date from 1736.

The timber bell-frame behind its wooden panelling is an unusual open-frame construction mixing seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth-century work, standing on a stone base tall enough to walk under. Its smaller bell, of thirteenth-century campanula form, originally belonged to the now-demolished Skofteby church and carries a faintly incised Latin inscription, the opening words of the Hail Mary. The current organ was built in 1975, its case incorporating the sounding front from an 1892 predecessor instrument.